What do you suppose it is like to be elected President of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.

Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special, over public, interests was demonstrated yet again.The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

The same Congress that can’t find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama “change” administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives’ war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives’ war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing “Yes we can!”

The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion “defense” budget for this year. The $660 billion — probably a low-ball number — is ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world.

How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerrilla capability to resist invaders?

These “wars” are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the “security forces” with police powers over the American citizenry.

Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.

This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a “city on the hill, a light unto the world.”

Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America’s reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, continues to attack “targets” in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.

Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population.

According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at HarvardUniversity, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans.

If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the “security” bureaucracy.

The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration.

In the Afghan “desert of death” the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?

What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry?

China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munition corporations’ wars and the bankster bailouts.

Why is the US making itself impotent by fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with its security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?

The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the WallStreet Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of NationalReview. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, GeorgetownUniversity, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, StanfordUniversity.

The Government of the United States has a long, well document His-Story of lying to the American Indians and violating its Treaties with us. This genocidal colonialism has directly led to the inhumane and tragic living conditions on this, and most Indian Reservations.

“They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised not to take our land, and they did.” – Mahpiua Luta “Red Cloud” Oglala Lakotah

Now, it is clearly evident that our Government is using even more refined tactics of Orwellian propaganda to hypnotize ALL Americans into endorsing it’s hegemony of the World:

Homeland security is the new, expanded, version of the B.I.A.: Just last night, we see that the ABC network is promoting a new show, “Homeland Security USA,” Every day the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security patrol more than 100,000 miles of America’s borders. This territory includes airports, seaports, land borders, international mail centers, the open seas, mountains, deserts and even cyberspace (and remember anytown U.S.A. too!) . Now viewers will get an unprecedented look at the work of these men and women while they use the newest technology to safeguard our country and enforce our laws, in “Homeland Security USA,” … This strategy of brainwashing the public and glorifying the violence that our Government foments is apparent in the comments of one of this shows new fans, “I think America needs to be educated in how hard our Homeland Security officers work everyday to protect THEM! They do risk their lives every moment. I do think a few things in the show were a bit ridiculous but then again I’m hoping that they will learn from their mistakes and improve the show. Also if you have ever seen Australia’s reality show about their Homeland security you will see how interesting and exciting they can make it.” (emphasis added)

A Nation of Laws?: How many times have we heard this rhetoric about the U.S. being a nation of laws? Just as the Indian’s have been denied their sovereign rights, the Government, through the ‘Patriot Act’ and other legislation, is dramatically eroding the sovereign rights of ALL Americans. Beware the erosion, nay extinction, of the Posse Comitatus Act.

History of Government misconduct in the Court room (Sacrosanct?) During the Wounded Knee trial in 1973, the court supplemented its oral ruling with a written decision on October 9, 1974, finding governmental misconduct due to:

(1) The prosecutor’s deliberate or at least negligent conduct in offering and failing to correct the “obviously false” testimony of Government witness Louis Moves Camp (concocted by the F.B.I.);

(2) The prosecutor’s “intentional deception” of the court with respect to an alleged rape incident involving the witness Louis Moves Camp;

(3) The prosecutor’s “grossly negligent conduct,” if not “deliberate deception,” in offering the testimony of Government witness Alexander David Richards when that testimony was directly contradicted in a previously transcribed interview;

(4) The prosecutor’s having been “either deliberately or negligently dilatory” in searching for information detailing the extent of military involvement at Wounded Knee and Government “cover up” of the extent of that involvement;

He DID Promise Change: (VIEW THE VIDEO BY RUSSELL MEANS) Lastly, we must again address, Prez Obama’s pick for Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. We maintain that this choice is not a new one, but part of a larger plan to ‘change’ the government from one run by neo-cons to one run by zionists. Rahm Israel Emanuel (Hebrew: ?? ???????) was born in Chicago, Illinois. His first name, Rahm, means “high” or “lofty” in Hebrew, while his last name, Emanuel, means “God is with us.” According to his father, his son is the namesake of Rahamim, a Lehi combatant who was killed. Rahm

Where is the Constitution? Where is the Law? What will happen to us in the coming months and years? Legislation Eroding Your Civil Rights!

A note from Russell: Albert Einsteins definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Anyone capable of critical thinking has known for some time that at least since 1948 America is being raped by the DemoPublicans for the purpose of profiteering and control. This is clearly evident by this Country’s intentional transformation from a productive, producing Nation to a greed-based “consumer” mentality! Through mass psychological manipulation via the media and the government takeover of the schools, American Citizens have become nothing more than lemmings following the Pied Piper, e.g. the U.S. GOVERNMENT, totally forgetting there responsibilities as free, sovereign individuals. Always remember the axiom, “Freedom means you are free to be responsible!”

Ward Churchill has written a book entitled, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, where he uses U.S. government documents to dispel the two public relations claims of the government, which are that; 1) America is a nation of laws, and 2) America is a peace loving nation. In this book he proves that America has been at war every year of its existence and, since 1946, has violated U.S. Constitutional and International Laws each and every year.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

1. Posse Comitatus Act Eliminated

The Act was a response to, and subsequent prohibition of, the military occupation by U.S. Army troops of the former Confederate States during the ten years of Reconstruction (1867